


take me home, to the place i belong

by crocustongues



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (it's fine please don't cry i don't have insurance for that), Fluff, Inspired by Studio Ghibli, KuroDai Week, M/M, background unrequited love, poetry and other extreme sports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 19:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14625186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocustongues/pseuds/crocustongues
Summary: Daichi works at school as a teacher but in his free time, he reads all the literature he can. One day, he meets a cat, who leads him into an adventure that changes his life.





	take me home, to the place i belong

**Author's Note:**

> this is a whisper of the heart inspired fic for the last day of kurodai week for the prompt ghibli AU (sobs i can't believe it's over)
> 
> some context: unlike shizuku and seiji, tetsu and daichi are aged up! they're teachers at daichi's old school. it's also super not like the movie because things got out of hand. some lines and actions are still the same (either from the movie, or from the characters themselves, like daichi's lines from haikyuu!! or the Baron because i'm clearly very very creative) but i hope its still understandable and maybe even enjoyable! thank u

————-☾————-

The moonlight streams in through the open window, casting a silvery veneer on the figure hunched at the desk. The clock reads 3 am.

Daichi’s well aware he should probably be asleep. The new school term starts in a week and his sleeping schedule has never been more off-kilter than now, but the poem he’s been writing isn’t coming along the way he wants it to and it’s frustrating to keep scratching out words at random. He sighs and tears out the page from his notebook, crumpling it into a tight ball.

He stares out the window, looking at the moon, hoping she has the answers he’s looking for. The only sounds are the crickets outside, Suga’s muffled snores from one room over, and the melody of the sticky summer breeze that ruffles through Daichi’s hair as he stares up at the sky.

————-☾————-

“—Daichi! _Daichi!_ ” A voice calls out, and Daichi blinks awake, eyes heavy with sleep. Suga’s standing by his bed looking somewhere between harried and annoyed when he says, “I’m late for work today, and Asahi’s going to go to the grocery store later, so please bring me lunch when you go to the library! I’ve put the rice in the cooker, don’t forget!” He leaves in a whirl of possibly the worst time management Daichi’s ever seen. Daichi isn’t surprised, he thinks as he rubs his eyes tiredly, they’ve grown up together and Suga’s always just shy of punctual.

Precisely five seconds later:

“Forgot my keys!” Comes a muffled yell from the living room.

“Next to the TV!” Daichi yells back, his voice cracking at the end.

“Found it!” 

“Well, that’s where you left it,” Daichi yawns to himself. He looks at his desk, entirely covered in scraps of paper and stacks of novels with a rainbow sticky notes spilling out every other page. Daichi catches sight of the last thing he’d written. He smooths out the paper and reads it over, sighing. Maybe he could turn it into a song, there were far too many rhyming words for his liking. He might have to ask Moniwa what he thought about it for the choir club this year.

“Daichi! I’m going to the grocery store now. Did Suga tell you—oh, did you just wake up?” Asahi pops in, holding a mop.

“Oh, Asahi,” Daichi says, stretching his hands over his head. He might as well start his day, who knows, maybe inspiration will strike him today. The universe works in mysterious ways. “I’ll make lunch, then. See you.”

Asahi nods and leaves, and Daichi makes good on his promise and makes lunch—cold ramen and fried vegetables and boiled chicken. He might even grab Suga some ice cream later, if he feels generous enough.

With everything carefully wrapped and stowed away in his backpack, between notebooks and poetry books and unsharpened pencils, he sets off to the library, humming a tune to himself, which soon dissolves into a song with last night’s lyrics.

The train is almost empty, but Daichi can’t really blame anyone, it’s near madness to step outside in sticky and oppressive heat of the season, _especially_ in the afternoon. He’s incredibly grateful for the fact that he’s a school teacher and can take the summer off, unlike Suga, who has to work at the library five days a week, even during summer. Daichi likes the library, though, and spends most of his time there, combing through the innumerable books for what he calls the perfect poem.

“What if you never find it?” Suga had asked once, doubtfully eyeing the pile of books next to Daichi.

“I will, you just wait.”

“What then?”

Daichi didn’t exactly know _what then_ because he hadn’t reached that stage yet, it was a far off ideal, blurry and indistinct, but he knows he’ll know for sure when he reads it. There’s something about words, Daichi always thought, that gave you direction, even when they weren’t your own. They made you sit down and think, and think, and _think_ , until you’d reached the end of your dilemma or saddled yourself with another so large, your current one was practically insignificant.

When the train stops at the next station, the only other person with Daichi gets off, and to his enormous surprise, a tabby cat strolls in, and sits itself down next to Daichi. He doesn’t know what prompts him but he finds himself making conversation with the cat.

“Hello,” he begins, fully realising the cat could not reply, and judging by the way it’s eyeing Daichi, _would not_ , if it could. “It’s terribly hot, isn’t it?”

“I’m going to the library, to give my friend his lunch. Where are you going?” To his surprise, the cat meows, possibly by way of reply. Daichi is so stunned for a moment he wonders if he’s hallucinating because of the heat.

“Oh,” he says, at the announcement for his station, “this is my stop. I’ll see you later, okay?” The cat meows and jumps off its seat, getting out the moment the train’s doors open. Daichi calls out for it to wait, as he follows it, eyes glued to it, so he doesn’t accidentally miss it.

He has to stop at the main road, though, because the traffic light turns red, and his heart’s pumping with a sense of adventure and wonder. It sounds like the beginning of a story and Daichi’s thrilled to bits. The cat’s waiting for him on the other side, and begins its journey once it sees Daichi follow.

It takes the way to the library and Daichi’s excited, really, it isn’t often he does things on a whim, but this is turning out to be quite the venture. He’s sweating in the sweltering heat, but he follows the cat with a surge of unrelenting determination; right, right again, down an incredibly narrow street, around the corner and into a garden. He climbs over the wall of the abandoned garden, hoping the overgrown greens conceal his activities. He almost loses the cat, but it meows to him, from on the roof, watching lazily.

“It’s been a few years since I did any sports, alright?” He tells the cat, who looks wholly unimpressed by Daichi’s panting. They set off once again, up the hill, this time, and Daichi wonders if following the cat is even a good idea, huffing up the stairs, two at a time. He shakes the thought out of his head almost immediately; no good story ever comes from a place of doubt.

The cat finally stops outside a green door that Daichi would’ve looked over, even if he had been looking for it. It meows and slips in through the cat flap and Daichi wonders if he should go in. the sign outside reads OPEN, so it should be alright, right?

He pushes the door open slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the dim room inside. Once he gets used to the lighting, he finds he’s standing in the middle of an antiquary, filled to the brim with odd bits and bobs that shine with an almost-forgotten nostalgia—a tall grandfather clock, the old gramophone in the corner, a dollhouse with two walls missing, a miniature ship in a bottle (Daichi’s always wondered how they do it), and a tiny cat statue with near glowing eyes. The cat Daichi’d followed has disappeared once again but he’s drawn towards the cat statue.

“It feels like I know you,” Daichi whispers to himself, entranced, drawing closer to it, slipping his bag off his shoulders.

“Welcome,” A disembodied voice says from somewhere to the left.

Daichi yelps and takes a step back, nearly tripping over some boxes.

“You can look around, I don’t—oh. I see you’ve found the Baron. He doesn’t get company often. Just me and my nephew, when he comes to visit.”

An old man comes into view, and his smile reaches his eyes, crinkling with joy. 

“The Baron? You mean this cat? He’s _lovely_ ,” Daichi says, still mesmerised. The grandfather clock chimes next to him and the old man beckons him closer to it.

“Look carefully,” he says, and winds the clock to just a minute before the hour.

When the clock chimes, the middle opens up to display a wooden man playing the flute, looking up at the twelve o’clock hour. A lovely tune plays for a few seconds, and Daichi can’t take his eyes off it. The old man gently nudges him to the twelve o’clock hour, where instead of the number 12, a pale woman stuck out, looking down towards the flute player. She has a lost and forlorn expression painted on, and it makes Daichi’s heart ache.

“The man is the king of flutes, who lost his wife in a tragic accident. He played the flute to the gods of the underworld to try and bring her back, and they agreed on the condition that he play his flute and walk back home, and not turn around to see if she was following. He was so afraid he’s lost her once, and was losing her again, that halfway through he turned and saw her vanish before his eyes. He spent the rest of his days playing the flute, and hoping he could be reunited with his beloved after his death,” the old man finishes, with a tinge of sadness.

“Do they ever get to be together?” Daichi asks, his voice barely a whisper, afraid to erase the magic of the moment.

“Perhaps in death,” the old man says, “Love doesn’t end with death or distance.”

Daichi nods, only half understanding, and turns back to the clock.

It’s the most _beautiful_ thing Daichi’s _ever_ seen.

The clock chimes once again, and the lilt of the flute fades. The, It strikes Daichi with a frighteningly tangible thud to his chest. “Is this clock fast?” Daichi asks, guiltily remembering the lunch he’d promised to deliver to Suga.

“Not by much, about five minutes I’d say,” the old man says.

“I have to go to the library, but can I come back another day?” Daichi asks hurriedly, almost tripping over himself in his haste.

“Of course,” the old man says, smiling softly.

“Thank you,” Daichi calls as he leaves, barely noticing the young man standing at the door.

It’s only when he’s halfway down the hill that Daichi remembers his bag he’d left at the store and groans out loud. Before he can turn around and go back, a bicycle comes to near-violent stop next to him and a young man with the worst bedhead Daichi can fathom hands him his bag.

“You left it behind, Sawamura Daichi-san” he says with a too-smug grin, eyes dancing with mischief. “You have some nice poems in there,” and takes off on his bicycle, which makes a terrible squeaky sound as he goes up the hill.

“Wait, who are yo— _did you go through my things?!_ ” Daichi’s mad when he thinks about that, and he’s mad all the way to the library. He tells Suga about it, and calls that guy ‘bedhead-jerk’ at least twenty times. He’s kind of still mad when Suga goes back to work and he sits down in the furthest corner next to the window and pulls out a poetry book from the shelf. It’s a new book, Suga had informed him, but there was already a name at the back: Kuroo Tetsurou. That made Daichi a little more intrigued and a little less mad, until he’s all but curious, anger melting away like ice cream.

He spends the day reading and writing and rewriting and reading again, and sets off home with Suga. The cycle repeats over the next week, but without the cat, and the shop (which read ‘NEKOMATA ANTIQUITIES’ on the outside) had the WE’RE CLOSED TODAY sign stuck at the door, every time he visited. It’s over, Daichi thinks, perhaps a little sadly, mourning his summer adventure.

————-☾————-

School is pretty exciting this year, Daichi has a brand new class to teach and he’s always happy to see new faces, eager to learn and perhaps even share his love for literature.

“Hey, did you know,” a voice pipes up from behind him in the hallway. Daichi turns around to see Moniwa Kaname, and smiles a warm smile while he waits for Moniwa to catch up to him.

“Did you know, there’s a new teacher this term!” Moniwa says, and it’s pretty interesting to Daichi, because as far back as he can remember, _he_ was the last new teacher, perhaps three years ago when his mentor, Takeda-sensei, retired.

“Have you met him, yet?” Daichi asks, and Moniwa replies that he hasn’t, but the principal will probably introduce them at the staff room. He tells Moniwa about his idea for the choir song for the club and Moniwa nods in agreement.

That’s exactly what happens and Daichi’s forgotten anger rushes back when the principal introduces the new teacher.

“Everyone, this is Kuroo Tetsurou, and he will be taking over Yamagata-sensei’s classes this semester, until Yamagata-sensei is healthy enough to return.” Yamagata Hayato was their science teacher and Daichi knew he’d met with a car accident a few days ago. He’d visited with some flowers and said a few words in passing, but that was all. The substitute teacher, though, was the same man from that day on the hill, who’d rifled through Daichi’s things before returning his bag. Perhaps it’s childish of him, but Daichi looks the man over pretty darkly.

“I look forward to being in your care,” Kuroo Tetsurou bows, and everyone disperses as the bell rings for the first class.

“Sawamura-sensei, could I speak to you for a second?” the Principal asks and Daichi complies. “You and Kuroo-sensei have a few classes in common with the third-years this year. Would you mind looking after him and showing him around?”

Daichi nods slowly, not daring to believe his ears. He meets Kuroo’s eyes and nearly screams in frustration because he’s smiling that same smile, wide and sincere, as if they’d never met before, as if Daichi isn’t angry with him.

“I’ll be indebted to you, Sawamura Daichi-san,” he says, and Daichi groans inwardly as they walk to class.

“So, did you write any new poems?” Kuroo asks, and Daichi doesn’t miss the tone. 

He frowns and says, “hasn’t your mother taught you to keep your nose out of other people’s business?”

Kuroo’s response is laughter and Daichi huffs audibly at that, to which Kuroo laughs harder, and it reminds Daichi of the old grandfather clock and the flute and the star-crossed lovers that called it home.

————-☾————-

Only a few weeks later, it seems as if Kuroo has always been part of the school, seamlessly melding into the fine workings of high school education. Daichi asks his class, one day, what they thought of Kuroo-sensei and his teaching.

“He teaches really well,” Yachi-san says, and Daichi thinks that if timid little Yachi-san is volunteering praise, Kuroo really must be a miracle worker.

“Yeah, well enough so even Shrimpy here passed the last test,” Tsukishima-kun snickers, and everyone laughs in conjunction, and Hinata Shouyou, or Shrimpy-kun, for his tiny stature, puffs up and smiles proudly. Daichi congratulates him and makes a note to thank Kuroo for helping even his weakest students.

He has the chance later that day at lunch, when Moniwa invites Kuroo to have lunch with them, as he corrects math papers, all inked in red with various circles and arrows. Daichi thanks his lucky stars he doesn’t have to deal with math now, eyeing the papers warily.

He thanks Kuroo warmly for his good work, and Kuroo looks surprised.

“I only helped answer the questions they asked. Your class is smart, Sawamura, I have to give credit where it’s due.”

They go back and forth like this, talking about their classes, and keeping Moniwa company until there’s a knock at the door. When Daichi calls out a ‘come in’, he’s surprised to find Yamaguchi-kun from his class, looking around shyly.

“Yes, Yamaguchi-kun?” Daichi asks kindly.

“Ah, Sawamura-sensei—“ he breaks off, clearly self-conscious around other people. Kuroo seems to pick up on that, and says, “Yamaguchi-kun, you did really well on the test last week! Keep up the good work! Moniwa-sensei and I are just leaving, see you around, Sawamura-san, Yamaguchi-kun.”

“I was wondering, if, um, if you had any poems,” Yamaguchi begins when they’re alone in the office.

“What kind?” Daichi asks, an inkling of suspicion growing in his mind.

“For love,” Yamaguch says, so quietly, Daichi almost misses it.

“Well, let me see what I can find, can you come see me tomorrow?”

Yamaguchi nods and thanks him on his way out.

Daichi thinks about love and poetry and love poems all through choir. He listens to the lyrics the kids sing in harmony, still barely believing they liked it enough to use it as their practise song. He thinks it sounds better when sung and in the company of friends, more than anything else.

————-☾————-

In the twenty-six years that Daichi has been alive, he’s fairly sure what first love looks like. It looks like the first cup of coffee in the morning, it sits in your stomach, warm and sweet. It feels like the shimmering air on a summer afternoon, when you want to stretch out on your belly and do nothing at all. It smells like the rain at the end of a hot summer, refreshing and familiar. It tastes like the first snow of the season, when you lose your years, until you’re a child again, wide-eyed and trying to catch snowflakes on your tongue.

After twenty-six years, Daichi’s never thought first love could look so painful. He watches as Yamaguchi-kun hands the letter he’d written painstakingly, including a poem from one of Daichi’s selections. He watches as Tsukishima-kun looks uncomfortable, he says something to Yamaguchi-kun and walks away. He watches as Yamaguchi-kun falls to his knees in the yard, away from prying eyes, once Tsukishima-kun is gone. He watches, in surprise this time, when Kuroo approaches Yamaguchi-kun and offers him his hand and a pudding cup, and they walk back into the school building.

“Yamaguchi-kun is in the nurse’s office,” Kuroo tells Daichi between classes.

“You were watching,” Daichi says.

“So were you. You didn’t say anything to him, did you?”

They sit in silence in their respective classes, each stewing over the events of the day.

When the school bell rings at the end of the day, Daichi packs his bag and leaves, pausing for a second outside to throw some trash into the dustbin.

When he disappears around the corner, Kuroo peaks inside the bin, and finds a worn notebook, with Sawamura Daichi printed on the cover in neat kanji. He looks around and takes it out, dusting the cover and puts it in his bag, until it is ready to be returned to where it belongs.

————-☾————-

When Daichi gets home, he bins all his half-finished prose and incomplete poems. The various volumes he’d bought, the ones that had called his room home for nearly a decade, are moved to the store room. He tells Suga and Asahi to go ahead and eat without him.

“Are you okay?” Asahi worries, and Daichi assures them it’s just one of those days, and Suga says he’s going to keep some food out for Daichi after all, just in case he feels like it.

Daichi shuts his door after, and _cries._

————-☾————-

It’s Sunday morning and Daichi doesn’t know what brings him to it, but he’s standing in front of Nekomata Antiquities again. It still says WE ARE CLOSED TODAY but he does spot the cat that brought him here. He feels the urge to converse again, and he says, “hey, what do you think about writing?”

The cat looks at him, as if waiting for him to continue, and Daichi sighs, sitting down next to it.

“It’s supposed to make you feel something, you know, it’s supposed to make things better. Then why—“ he chokes up, burying his face in his hands, and the cat meows at him, climbing on to his lap.

“Hey, Sawamura, are you okay?” Daichi looks up at the voice, and he sees Kuroo, looking over worriedly.

“It’s nothing, really. I came here to see the owner, is he okay? I haven’t seen the shop open in a while.” 

Kuroo senses the change in topic, and complies readily enough. “Uncle’s shop is small and isn’t open that many days, anyway. Was there something you wanted to get?”

Daichi shakes his head, and asks about the Baron and the clock.

Kuroo’s eyes light up at the name, and he says, “The grandfather clock? It was here only for repairs. Uncle finished it the day you forgot your lunch here. But he would never sell the Baron. He’s almost like a member of the family, but he won’t tell me why. Do you want to see it?”

Daichi nods, remembering the statue’s luminous eyes, staring deep into his soul. He very much wants to see it again. Kuroo grabs him by his hand and takes the stairs just around the door, turning to the cat to say, “You come, too, Kenma,” and the cat—Kenma, apparently—stretches and falls asleep in response.

“Kenma, huh? Is he yours?” Daichi asks, climbing up the stairs behind Kuroo.

“Not really. He comes and goes as he likes. I’m surprised he let you pet him.” Kuroo sounds one-third jealous and two-thirds awed, and Daichi decides he quite likes Kenma a lot more than he’d thought.

“He’s over there,” Kuroo says, switching the lights on in the room. Daichi looks into the Baron’s eyes, and feels a sort of calm wash over him, like his world, tilted on its axis, had turned straight again. He wonders, briefly, if the Baron was magic, some kind of curse-lifting entity trapped within the ceramic. The Baron’s eyes are golden, almost like real gold but brighter and far more alive than should be possible to recreate within human capabilities. It’s a silly thought, but Daichi _wonders_.

There’s a piano in the corner, and Daichi asks if Kuroo plays the piano. Kuroo stutters over a yes, yes he used to, but he doesn’t very often, now.

“Play me something,” Daichi asks unexpectedly, surprising even himself. “Please.”

Kuroo looks lost in thought for a while, and Daichi eggs him on. He finally agrees, but only if Daichi sings along.

“I can’t sing!” Daichi protests.

“Perfect, then. I’ve heard you in choir,” and begins playing a familiar tune. Daichi counts the beats— _one, two, three, four_ —and stumbles over the first couple of words, before closing his eyes and singing the words he’d penned down one night, seemingly a lifetime ago.

Daichi sings several iterations, perfectly in sync with Kuroo’s notes, his fingers gliding smoothly over the keys, sometimes joining in for the chorus. Kuroo’s uncle comes home, somewhere in the middle of the line that talks about belonging and Daichi pinks a little at his newfound audience, but continues until he can’t anymore. His throat feels raw, but in a good way that makes him feel like this was the magic they talked about in the books he read. The kind that bubbles under your skin, threatening to spill out into the world. The sort that makes things seem a little better than they did before.

Kuroo tells him, in what Daichi understands is a moment of vulnerability, still under the enchantment of adrenaline and music, that he wants to play the piano professionally, some day. Daichi nods, seriously and encourages him. 

“You have to believe in yourself, you know. You’ll never win, if you don’t believe you can.”

Kuroo stares at him, and Daichi’s suddenly afraid that he’d overstepped into the unsolicited opinion territory. To his amazement, Kuroo laughs softly, and says, “how can you say things like that with a straight face?” Daichi can tell the tips of his ears are dusted pink, and in turn, his cheeks take on the same blush.

He thanks Nekomata-san, and he thanks Kuroo, who blushes deeply this time and tells him not to worry about it. Daichi walks back home, accompanied part of the way by Kenma, feeling lighter than he had in a long, long time.

————-☾————-

It rains on the following Monday, he’s late and so is Suga, because _of course_ he is, and he hurries over the puddles to try and reach before the morning bell, while trying not to get drenched to the best of his abilities.

He hurries around the corner and pauses rather dramatically, because there was Tsukishima-kun, offering Yamaguchi-kun his own umbrella, bumping shoulders and looking less tense and awkward than the last time Daichi had seen them together. Maybe the world did fix itself, given enough time and faith.

Daichi doesn’t mind so much, then, when he arrives after the morning bell, to a chattering class.

————-☾————-

At the end of the day, this is what Daichi hears:

“Sawamura-sensei is dating Kuroo-sensei, did you know?”

Daichi nearly chokes on air when he hears this in the hallway. He passes the little crowd gathered outside his class, and hurries to the staff room to ask Moniwa about this… _rumour_ , that had taken root in the third-years’ hallway.

“Hmm, I’d heard of it, but I thought you knew, so I didn’t mention it. Are you, though?” Moniwa turns a questioning gaze on Daichi.

“Am I what?”

“Dating Kuroo-sensei.”

Daichi chokes on air for the second time that day and decides that he’s going to die before his time due to choking by embarrassment.

“ _No_ ,” he says, hushed and urgent, willing Moniwa to believe him. And then Moniwa says something that spirals his entire world into the waiting chaos.

“Would it be so terrible to?” Moniwa smiles at him, a knowing look, full of secrets and a sadness Daichi can’t place but he knows is directed at him. Daichi’s afraid that he thinks of liquid gold eyes entirely too much already, pronouncedly different yet wholly indistinguishable when awash with different emotions. Perhaps it’s the lack of coffee talking, but Daichi’s heart whispers the reality, over and over.

“Sawamura, can I talk to you for a second?” The universe excels at irony, perhaps a tad _too_ well, because Kuroo Tetsurou stands at the doorway, his face a cross between nervous joy and bracing for impending disaster.

“Sure,” Daichi finds himself saying, through the heartbeat echoing in his ears.

They walk in silence, all the way up to the antiquary, up on the hill where Daichi first met Kuroo.

“I’m going to Tokyo,” Kuroo says finally, his face breaking into a nervous smile, “I spoke to the director of Tokyo Institute of Music, and he liked my audition piece enough to hear me in person. I’m—“ he breaks off, running out of steam as he continues. “I wanted you to know first,” he finishes quietly, looking at Daichi seriously, waiting for a reaction.

“You’re leaving before the semester?” Daichi asks and then mentally smacks himself because he’s positively _delighted_ for Kuroo, and wants to clap him on the back and tell him to go ahead and make his dreams come true, like all the heroes and legends he’s read about. Kuroo deserves all of that and more.

“I—yes, and I wanted you to—I mean, if it’s okay,” Kuroo takes a deep breath, and pushes something into Daichi’s hands.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, it’s his notebook, the one he thought he’d thrown away.

“I want to follow my dream, but you gave me the nudge I needed to make that leap of faith. You believed in me when I thought I couldn’t,” he pauses, taking another deep breath. “I want the same for you, I want you to never stop writing. Your words—“ 

The inability of words is rather endearing and before he can stop himself, Daichi raises his hand and cups Kuroo’s cheek, and Kuroo smiles, the same one from the summer, wide and sincere, and Daichi hazards, perhaps a little bit in love.

“I don’t know how long it take,” Kuroo sighs, closing his eyes and feeling the tender warmth of Daichi’s hand, “but I would like for you to wait. For me. Please?” It ends in a question, golden eyes boring into dark brown.

Daichi feels his throat close up, his heart moving up, up, _up_ , making room for other emotions in his chest (indescribable happiness and magic, and maybe those two were named love by people who choose to pen down this feeling), and tells Kuroo (rather dramatically, in hindsight) that he will wait, until the end of his days, if he has to.

The sun sets, and Daichi doesn’t remember who moves first, and maybe it doesn’t matter, because he feels Kuroo’s lips on his own already, a soft and hesitant peck at first which melts into something more. It makes Daichi’s toes curl and he licks into Kuroo’s mouth with an almost giddy kind of satisfaction, especially when he feels Kuroo smile against his own lips.

————-☾————-

_Ten years later:_

Daichi wakes up earlier than he wants to because he catches Tetsurou’s fingers ghosting over his face, pausing and moving, and then some. Daichi knows what he’s doing, it’s something they’d discovered a few years ago—Daichi freckles under the sun. Tetsurou takes it upon himself (“I’m duty bound,” he would say, trying to look serious, before his face split into the largest grin imaginable) to connect them and come up with new constellations.

(When Daichi’d asked why, Tetsurou had answered it was because their current ones had such sad and painful stories attached to them, and Daichi still makes fun of him for it).

“Say, Tetsu,” he says now, cracking one eye open, “are you being—wait, how did Yaku say it? Being sappy again?”

Tetsurou scowls. “Who cares what Yakkun says.” Daichi chuckles at that because Yaku, who’d taken over Tetsurou’s post at school, and Tetsurou got along like a house on fire. Too fiery, sometimes, but they got along all the same.

Tetsurou hasn’t been ‘Kuroo’ to Daichi in years, instead, he’s been Tetsu (and ‘Annoying’, sometimes, in the vein of ‘Don’t be Annoying’). They know the other inside out now, and live together comfortably in the Sendai countryside. Tetsurou still plays the piano, occasionally at home, for Daichi, but he makes him sing along, chiming in with an off-key lyric here and there. He plays for the Music Institute once or twice a month, and Daichi comes to watch with an armful of the prettiest flowers he can find.

Daichi still writes, of course, and he still teaches at the school, teaching and sharing his love for words. It’s an odd relationship, still, him and his words, but he supposes they’re alright when they’re on the shelf, about a travelling grandfather clock that does more than just tell the time, a walking and talking cat statue with flashing gold eyes, and two lovers kept apart, but always together in their hearts. You know, the kind of books kids ask their parents for, to which they’re told they’re too old for magic, but the sort parents themselves would (and _should_ , Tetsurou thinks to himself) read under covers, late at night, because that’s where the magic begins.

The Baron lives with them now, Nekomata-san had handed it over to his nephew when they’d finally bought a house of their own, and that had been the first time Daichi’d cried in front of Tetsurou. The Baron lives on the shelf, next to Daichi’s books and poetry books, all of which they’ve read before, from Suga’s library. They’d thought to buy their favourites, now that they’ve got all this space to fill, so why not fill it with love?

“I’d seen you reading,” Tetsurou explains, “and I heard you talking about your perfect poem, so I checked out a bunch to see what you were on about.”

Daichi’s still working on looking for the ‘perfect poem’, except now, instead of looking outside, he looks within. He’d come to realise he wouldn’t be content with someone else’s words, so he’s decided to write his own.

There are too many mentions of ‘liquid gold eyes’ and ‘kisses that taste like the first real sunset in the world’ but it sounds pretty perfect to Daichi.

————-☾————-

**Author's Note:**

> hello! thank u for reading! i duly apologise for doing That Shit to yamaguchi but it's for the plot (jazz hands)
> 
> i know you might've been looking forward to the iconic scene from the ending but that's my favourite scene and if anyone wrote it, i'd happily read it, but it's well out of my capabilities and i couldn't bring myself to Do It. however, several scenes were cut from this fic, so maybe i'll come back one day to add them in? mayhaps in a few years when i don't want to cry when i think of this.
> 
> at first i kind of wanted daichi to encompass the writers i knew, and the insecurities they (and me, i suppose?) faced, but the writing and magic mentioned is the kind from your favourite book. think of your favourite book and imagine the way your heart wept for joy when you finished! his insecurities are pretty real, though, and that's the way i still look at words, but hey, anything you create, whether its writing or art or music, its the whisper of your heart (name drop!) of your true desires. 
> 
> thanks for coming to my ted talk
> 
> (i would link my tumblr and twitter, but i'm honestly so terrified of the reception on this that, i'd rather not, but please, by all means, validate me and the five commas i used in this one sentence)
> 
> the title is from take me home, country roads by john denver


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